How I Made A Website About Fitness...

...and why you need a website too

This page is a continuation of my About Me page. I never thought I would be able to inspire so many people.

I get a lot more questions related to my About Me page than I do from any other part of my site put together! Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and all of the amazing cancer survivors that have written and shared their stories with me as well. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and then taking the time to write in. You all inspire me to continue living my dreams in hopes that I can inspire more people to seek the life that they have always wanted.

I also get a lot of questions asking about building websites and about SBI. I have noticed that a lot of the questions are the same, so I thought I would take the time to answer some common questions about SBI. Hopefully, this will save some time as opposed to me writing really long e-mails back to everyone. :)

So How Much Do You Make?

Well, this is is the most common so I will start with this. People definitely are not shy about asking How much are you making with your websites and how long did it take?

It is June 2010 and I have been with SBI since June 2008. So exactly 2 years for me so far. I own 3 SBI websites: Extreme Fitness Now my first site, Today's Women and Health, and Financial Freedom Informant. This site is the newest site and I haven't done as much with it as I would like. But I'm "retired" now so that's changing.

Extreme Fitness Now and Today's Women and Health are established websites. They have been around for a while and I get anywhere from 1200-1600 visitors a day and over 30,0000 visitors a month from the both of these sites alone.

My income from Adsense is about $700(USD) a month. (Adsense earning for May 2010 below)

I make money from other advertisers like Infolinks and Chitika on top of Google Adsense. I also have income from several other sources and advertisers including book sales, DVD sales, and other product sales through Clickbank, Amazon.com, Linkshare, and Commission Junction. I don't own these products. I just tell people where they can go to buy them and if they buy a product I earn a commission. Some of the books I sell on my fitness site make a $25 comission per sale. It is easy for me to earn a few extra hundred dollars a month. This is especially true for January and February when I earn double my average income. Got to love New Year's Resolutions!

Granted, it's not a full-time income yet, but it pays my rent and my basic utilities. Also, Adsense appears to double every year with site growth. I would rather work 10-15 hours a week teaching music that I love than 40-50 at a job I hate.

If I had the time to spend working on my sites all day, I could have doubled that income. This the is income I made working on my sites only 2-4 hours a week. So you see, the more time you put into it, the more money you stand to make.

The most important point to take away here is that my income is steadily growing, day after day after day, whether I work on the websites or not. It grows faster when I do a lot of work, but it still grows while I go away on long holidays or work on my music instead. I earn money while I travel, I earn money while I'm fishing, I earn money while I sleep. It's pretty hard to beat.

What's also hard to beat is the feeling that you own your life and your time. There is no way I could ever go back to working for others in a permanent job.

Is This Really as Easy as I sounds?

This question usually follows the money question. Hey, we all have our priorities, right? Well the answer is both yes and not depending on your definition of easy.

Is it pushing a few buttons and one month later you are rolling in money and packing your bags to retire to Costa Rica? If that's what you call easy, then the answer is no.

I stress this point to everyone, whether that ask this question or not: it takes time, hard work, dedication, and commitment to build a successful website. Do not underestimate the amount of time, energy, and hard work it takes to get a website off the ground.

But That's all it takes.It does not take exceptional writing skills, it does not take technical knowledge, it does not require that you know anything about computers or websites. Nothing.

You will initially have to learn a lot, but that learning is part of SBI. You will be guided through the whole process. Anybody with a brain who's willing to learn and work can do this, no matter what their background. So if that's what you wondered, then the answer is yes. It really is that easy. You can do it.

How much time do you spend working on your site?

I'll focus on my first site here (Extreme Fitness Now) or it'll get too complicated.

When I started I still had my day job, so I could only work on the weekends. I usually wrote a page or two per week. Some times I did not have time to write pages at all. But I averaged about 2-4 hours a week.

Now that my day job is over, I now dedicate anywhere from 8-20 hours a week working on my sites. And that's only if I want to. If I'm not home or away on vacation, the sites keep growing whether or not I work on them. Remember, I took this job because I could work on when I wanted to, not because I had to.

With all the extra work I was putting in, my site began to grow even faster. That meant more visitors, more money from adsense, products being sold, etc.

My focus now is to work on this Financial Freedom Informant and build it into a very successful website that can help a lot of people.

Sounds good but I have no idea what I could make a website about.

That is absolutely not a problem.

Most people who already have an idea change their mind once they start with SBI. I had two ideas when I started and dumped them both. SBI came up with the topics for all my websites.

The first thing that SBI teaches you is how to select a profitable topic. There are no general rules. Everybody is different so this is an individual decision. SBI has brainstorming tools. You use them to generate ideas and to analyse them. You'll see if there is enough interest in a topic, how much competition there is, and if there is money to be made.

To choose a topic for a website is the most important step in the whole process, so you shouldn't do it without SBI anyway. Don't know what to make your site about? Good!

It says it costs $299 for the first year. What are the costs after that? Are there any financial catches?

No catches :).

$299 is the yearly subscription fee. It works out $25 a month, but there is only the yearly payment option. And there is of course their rock solid money back guarantee. Don't like it? Just give it back.

There are no catches whatsoever. SBI includes everything you need. There are no hidden costs. You can't go wrong by trying it out. The way I see it you have everything to win and nothing to lose.

Important update! SiteSell is now offering a monthly subscription at $29.99. Wow, I didn't think they'd ever do that. My suggestion: if you are serious about building a sizeable income stream for yourself, get the yearly subscription. It works out cheaper, and if you don't like it you can easily get all your money back. I see no point in getting the monthly option, but apparently it is very popular.

What if I Can't Write?

I thought the same thing when I started. But as I already mentioned above, SBI teaches you everything you need to know to build a successful website, including how to write compelling content.

Ken Evoy wrote a fabulous book called Make Your Content Pre-Sell. It teaches how to write for the web. The book has always been part of SBI, available for free for SBIers, but outsiders had to buy it. But since some time in 2006 it is totally free for non SBIers, too. If someone tells me they worry about their writing I send them this link: you can download your free copy here.

That's it. Those are the questions that I've been asked a million times. If I forgot something I'm sure you'll ask and then I'll add it here.

I wish you much success and happy travels, and I'll leave you with this fellow: Ken Evoy, the founder of SiteSell and the creator of SBI.

If you have broadband just click on the little picture and he will personally show you around SBI via the SBI TV. (Slow connection? Go here for the print version instead.)